Nick Kokonas started trading options with $60,000, two-thirds of it borrowed, which he calls dangerously undercapitalized for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor.
Nick Kokonas, co-founder of Tock and founder of the Alinea Group, told My First Million's Shaan Puri that he has now found the same arbitrage three times — in trading, in fine dining, and in restaurant software — and is about to try for a fourth in immersive theater.
"I am now convinced that every arb is just about time scale."
Nick turned that $60,000 into a trading operation that once cleared over $100 million in a single year, then built Alinea into a three-Michelin-star restaurant despite having zero restaurant experience, then built Tock to fix a reservation system he says was arbitraging restaurants the same way Wall Street used to arbitrage him.
The full episode is covered here so you can skip it. 2 hours 5 minutes of audio, 9 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 takeaways that matter.
My First Million · Oct 26, 2026 · 2h 5m · 116m saved
With Nick Kokonas, Co-Founder of Tock and founder of the Alinea Group
Key Takeaways
Nick started trading on just $60,000 and built a dedicated phone line between his firm's New York and Chicago desks, giving him a 20-second information edge even Goldman Sachs couldn't beat
The trade was so good it scared him — he shut it down after seven months rather than destroy the big banks' order flow overnight, then reapplied to run it as an approved hedge program
At its peak the firm captured about 2% of the American Stock Exchange's daily volume and cleared over $100 million in a single year
He backed chef Grant Achatz to build Alinea with zero restaurant experience, open-sourcing the entire business plan before the doors even opened
Alinea's margins rose from 7–8% on $5 million in revenue to 18–20% on over $20 million, helped by in-house software that automated food costing
Every arbitrage, in trading, dining or booking software, is a bet on time scale — and every such window eventually closes as competitors catch up
1. Finding the Arb
Nick describes starting as a philosophy major with no finance background who faked his résumé — hiding his degree — to get hired as a $5.25-an-hour runner on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor. He then paid an independent trader $250 a week to teach him options, and was trading within a year on $60,000, two-thirds of it borrowed from a backer.
Starting on $60,000 is dangerously undercapitalized for the trading floor, Nick said
"I started with 60 grand. I can't express to you how undercapitalized that is on the trading floor." — Nick Kokonas
His risk philosophy came from Keith Goggin, his college friend and former trading partner.
"If you wake up every day feeling great, you're not taking enough risk. If you wake up every day throwing up, you're taking too much risk. You need to feel a tingle of uncomfortableness." — Nick Kokonas, quoting Keith Goggin
